46

Charlotte Leckie had dozed for a while but she still felt sleepy. She sang aloud the song that had been playing in her dream. It was an old Scots song, and she had no idea why she even remembered it, nor what she’d been dreaming. ’Twas there that Annie Laurie … Weird choice, she thought. She hadn’t heard that song in years. She didn’t even like it.

She turned on her side. Shiv must have drawn the curtains at some point because there was no light from the street.

She looked at the luminous dial of her watch. Nine o’clock exactly. She’d slept for nearly half an hour. She realized Shiv wasn’t in bed beside her. She heard water run in the bathroom. She felt very tired. She could easily drift back into sleep. What would it matter if she slept another fifteen minutes, or even thirty? She had no appointments. Shiv would expect her to stay until he decided it was time to leave anyway.

She listened to traffic, but it began to seem very far away. The Christmas singers were quiet now. Down the slope. She dozed. When she opened her eyes again she could still hear water running in the bathroom. The bedroom was impenetrably black save where a strip of light glowed under the bathroom door. Then a shape moved. The bathroom door opened. The sound of running water was louder. A white rectangle of light formed in the space, and the shape passed in front of this brilliance. She thought, Shiv, and was about to say his name when she realized that the figure entering the bathroom wasn’t her lover but somebody else, a stranger, and all the while the water ran and ran.

She heard a noise. She wasn’t sure of its source. It was almost the sound of air escaping, as in a sigh, but harsher. Harder. Or some object lodged in the throat of a person unable to expel it. Yes. But she wasn’t certain.

She forced herself to move. Up on one elbow. Her view of the bathroom was limited by her angle. White walls, white light, white tub and basin and curtain shower. The tiles on the floor were another colour. Salmon? That was her impression. White and salmon. She saw the interloper move towards the sink but then he was lost to her. She thought she should stay very still. She didn’t want to be seen. Why had she moved in the first place? She wondered why she hadn’t heard Shiv cry out in surprise. His privacy had been invaded, after all –

The stranger stood in the doorway again. He saw her.

She tried to make herself very small. She sought invisibility. She knew something bad had happened. The air in the room had changed. It was unbreathable. She watched the man. She saw only that half of his face exposed by light. Half of a beard, one eye, a corner of a mouth.

She started to say something but he moved quickly and pressed a finger firmly to her lips and held it.

‘Do not scream.’ He took his hand away.

‘Where is Shiv?’

‘No questions. Please.’

‘Where is he?’ she asked.

He stepped back from the bed and moved to the front door. There he paused, turned, held out his hands in a gesture of dismay, and then he was gone. He shut the door as he left.

She rose from the bed, went into the bathroom.

‘Shiv?’

The room was dense with steam. Hot water spurted into the basin. The floor was damp under her bare feet.

‘Shiv,’ she whispered.

She saw him then. He was seated in a chair, his head inclined over the washbasin. His arms hung at his sides.

‘Shiv?’

She couldn’t quite get her perceptions to work. Shiv wasn’t sitting right. She thought it was like looking at something very familiar from a place outside her experience. If you were as small as an ant, a blade of grass would be the size of a tree. But that didn’t do it, that didn’t describe quite the distortion that affected her understanding. She saw herself reflected vaguely through the layer of steam that adhered to the mirror above the basin. She remembered she was naked. Turn off the water: that was her immediate response to the situation. Practical.

Do something very very simple.

Turn off the tap. All this waste of hot water.

She reached towards the basin, then she drew her hand away again quickly. Through steam rising from the tap, she saw Shiv’s face and his thick white hair.

Nothing else about him was familiar. This wasn’t Shiv. This wasn’t Bannerjee, her lover.

Something else.